Dr. Natasha Vita-More (keynote speaker) is a designer and theorist. She is a professor at the University of Advancing Technology, Chairman of Humanity+, and a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. She received her doctorate from the Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, United Kingdom, where her thesis focuses on human enhancement and radical life extension.She is the designer and author of “Platform Diverse Body, Substrate Autonomous Person (fka “Primo Posthuman” - a future whole body prototype.) In 2013, she co-edited The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future. In 1983, Vita-More authored the “Transhuman Manifesto”; and founded Transhumanist Arts and Culture in 1993. She was the Chair of “Vital Progress Summit” 2004, establishing a precedent for discussion of human enhancement. She was the president of the Extropy Institute 2002-2006. Vita-More is a proponent of morphological freedom and enhancing human biology. To give credence to her arguments, Vita-More supports the Proactionary Principle.

In addition to academic works, she has exhibited at National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Brooks Memorial Museum,Institute of Contemporary Art, Women In Video, Telluride Film Festival, United States Environmental Film Festival and “Evolution Haute Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age”. She is published in more than two dozen journals and a contributing author to numerous books.

Max More

Dr. Max More is an internationally acclaimed strategic philosopher widely recognized for his thinking on the philosophical and cultural implications of emerging technologies. Max’s contributions include founding the philosophy of transhumanism, authoring the transhumanist philosophy of extropy, and co-founding Extropy Institute, an organization crucial in building the transhumanist movement since 1990. Since the start of 2011, he has served as President and CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the world’s leading cryonics organization.

Over the past two decades, Max has been concerned that our escalating technological capabilities are racing far ahead of our standard ways of thinking about future possibilities. Through a highly interdisciplinary approach drawing on philosophy, economics, cognitive and social psychology, and management theory, Max developed a distinctive approach known as the “Proactionary Principle”—a tool for making smarter decisions about advanced technologies by minimizing the dangers of progress and maximizing the benefits.

Max has a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from St. Anne’s College, Oxford University (1984-87). He was awarded a Dean’s Fellowship in Philosophy in 1987 by the University of Southern California and received his PhD in Philosophy from USC in 1995.

The topic of Max’s presentation will be: Double Visions: 7 Keys to an Integrated Transhumanism

“We have a dreadful shortage of people who know so much, can both think so boldly and clearly, and can express themselves so articulately. Carl Sagan managed to capture the public eye but Sagan is gone and has not been replaced. I see Max as my candidate for that post.” (Marvin Minsky)

Monica Andersonis the CTO of Sensai Corporation and founder of Syntience Inc., an AI research company. She has 20+ years of experience of industrial grade classical AI with a language processing emphasis and has been working with Deep Learning, Understanding Machines, Artificial Intuition, and Model Free Methods since 2001. For more about her theories about AI, see http://syntience.com/links ; several videos of presentations by her and others are available at http://videos.syntience.com . She is famous for soundbites like “If your AGI contains more than 10,000 lines of code then you are doing it wrong” and “AI is the ability in a computer to easily do that which is easy for humans.” Her lecture at TRANSHUMAN VISIONS - East Bay is titled, “Reasoning Is Overrated.”

John Smart is a foresight consultant, educator, and scholar. He is president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation (Mountain View, CA), a consultancy working to improve organizational strategy with respect to accelerating scientific, technological, business, and social change, co-founder of the Evo Devo Universe complex systems research community, lecturer in Leadership and Technological Change at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, CA), a technical advisor at NextIT, a leader in intelligent virtual agent platforms (Spokane, WA), and an advisor in Foresight and Forecasting at Singularity University (Mountain View, CA). John is a graduate of the U. Houston MS program in Studies of the Future.

John’s talk at the conference will be on: Brain Preservation: Realizing a New Human Option to Live Again

Neuroscientists, working with model organisms, are investigating the hypothesis that chemical or cryogenic brain preservation may preserve an organism’s memories and mental states after death. Our 501c3 nonprofit organization, the Brain Preservation Foundation, is offering a $100,000 prize to the first scientific team to demonstrate that the entire synaptic connectivity (“connectome” and “synaptome”) of mammalian brains can be perfectly preserved using either chemical preservation or cryopreservation techniques.

Such preserved brains may be “read” in the future, so that memories or identities can be restored or “uploaded” in computer form. Chemical preservation techniques are already being used to scan and upload the connectomes of very small animal brains (C. elegans and http://www.openworm.org, zebrafish, flies). We don’t yet understand how long-term memory is associatively stored in these brains at the gene/protein/receptor/synapse level, but breaking this code is an ongoing program in neuroscience.

Today, only 1% of people in the US are interested in living beyond their biological death (see “When I’m 164”, David Ewing Duncan, 2012). But once it has been demonstrated that we can recover simple memories from scanned brains in model organisms, and that brain preservation techniques faithfully preserve critical neural features of memory and identity in human brains, we predict this 1% will grow, in every society where brain preservation services become available. I believe that having the *option* of affordable brain preservation at death, once the science of memory preservation has been validated, will be a force to help all our societies become significantly more science-, future-, progress-, preservation-, sustainability-, truth and justice-, and community-oriented in coming years. Let’s talk about any concerns or questions you have with these ideas and technologies, and how each of us can help them realize their potential.

Brian Wang

Brian Wang is a long-time futurist and writer of some 14,000 articles on nextbigfuture.com. Nextbigfuture is a top 5 science website (per Technorati) and has over one million page views per month. Brian has studied extinction risks and all of the current major causes of death and damage and how to mitigate them. He made a set of 156 predictions in 2006 for nanotech-now and many of the predictions for the 5 year or less timeframe have proven to be accurate.

Some of Brian’s ideas worth highlighting are: 1) The actual safety and danger of energy, in deaths per terawatt hour. 2) Mundane Singularity, i.e., technologies which are less controversial than MNT but could be used to radically improve the world. 3) The “Nuclear Cannon” - using nuclear bombs to launch massive amounts of cargo into space while not releasing radiation into the atmosphere or violating treaties. 4) Tables forecasting when China’s economy will surpass the United States. Brian also has articles about making civilization more robust and how to make energy cleaner and reduce death from disease.

Prior to returning to an academic setting, Glenn consulted and practiced as a trial attorney with an emphasis in patient advocacy, bioethical and biotechnology issues, end of life decision-making, reproductive rights, genetics, neuroethics, parental/biological issues (aka nature vs. nurture), and animal rights. She was the lead attorney in several precedent-setting bioethics legal cases, including the Gray v. Romeo case. She has advised governmental leaders and agencies, and she has published numerous articles in professional journals. Some of her better-known articles include “Ethical Issues in Transgenics and Genetic Engineering” at Actionbioscience, “Keeping An Open Mind: What Legal Safeguards are needed?” in the American Journal of Bioethics,“Biotechnology at the Margins of Personhood: An Evolving Legal Paradigm” and “When Pigs Fly? Legal and Ethical Issues in Transgenics and the Creation of Chimeras”. She also is the Editor-in-Chief of the Women’s Bioethics BlogWomen’s Bioethics Blog.

Zoltan Istvan - Bestselling visionary author of The Transhumanist Wager, a fictional thriller and #1 on Amazon Philosophy. The critically-acclaimed, highly-controversial novel describes transhumanist Jethro Knights’s unwavering quest for immortality via science and technology. Zoltan - an American-Hungarian - began a solo, multi-year sailing journey around the world at the age of 21 with 500 handpicked books, mostly classics, as his main cargo. He’s explored 100+ countries—many as a journalist for the National Geographic Channel—writing, filming, and appearing in dozens of television stories, articles, and webcasts. His work has been featured by The New York Times Syndicate, Outside, San Francisco Chronicle, BBC Radio, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, Animal Planet, and the Travel Channel. He received awards for his coverage of the war in Kashmir, and gained worldwide attention for pioneering the extreme sport of volcano boarding. Zoltan later became a director for the international conservation group WildAid, leading armed patrol units to stop the billion-dollar illegal wildlife trade in Southeast Asia. In America, he started various successful businesses, from real estate development to filmmaking to viticulture, joining them under ZI Ventures. He is a philosophy and religious studies graduate of Columbia University and resides in San Francisco with his daughter and physician wife. Zoltan blogs for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today.

Hank Pellissier is director of Brighter Brains Institute, a San Francisco Bay Area think tank dedicated to transhumanism, life extension, brain enhancement, and other futurist topics. He as served as Managing Director of Transhumanity.net, ImmortalLife.info, and the Institute for Ethics in Emerging Technology (IEET), where he also wrote 7 of the Top 12 articles in 2011, and 4 of the Top 12 in 2012. He’s the author of Brighter Brains - 225 ways to injure or elevate intelligence, Invent Utopia Now and Why is the IQ of Ashkenazi Jews so High?, and the editor of Human Destiny is to Eliminate Death. Hank is a journalist who has written for GreatSchools.org, he was the “Local Intelligence” columnist for the New York Times (San Francisco edition), a daily columnist for Salon.com (“Naked World), a columnist at SFGate.com, and he’s written 100+ futurist articles for IEET, H+ Magazine, World Future Society, Acceler8or, and other publications, occasionally under his nom de plume, “Hank Hyena.” He’s also been a performance artist, slam poet, comedy club producer, preschool director, silkscreen artist, and lecturer on brain enhancement.

Gray Scott is a Futurist, Techno-Philosopher, Speaker, and Writer. Gray is the founder and CEO of SERIOUS WONDER.com, a professional member of The World Future Society and the co-organiser for the NY Futurists Meetup. Gray has written for The Futurist Magazine and has been featured and interviewed by magazines and radio from around the world including Psychology Today, The Star, IEET, Media Disruptus, London Futurists and The One Way Ticket show. Gray is a frequent keynote speaker and has spoken at LucidNYC, Connector Con NYC, and The Longevity Conference held recently in Washington DC. Gray lives in NY and is currently working on his first book about the future of technology and consciousness.

Gray’s lecture is on “The Psychedelic Transhuman”

“In the near future humanity will face a complex set of choices when it comes to extending consciousness. Some will choose to continue on as pure-bio beings and embrace the fate of mortal death. Others will choose to become Transhuman, merge with their technologies, or opt to leave the flesh behind completely. These brave humans will become full humanoids or bio-digital clones of the flesh self. They will upload their consciousness into pure digital form and may live on inside vast clouds of digital information. No matter what track we each of us decide to pursue we will need assistance processing the altered states of consciousness that we are bound to find in this bravest of new worlds.

Psychedelics are gaining favor in the medical and psychological communities as legitimate ways to cope with PTSD, death anxiety for the terminally ill, and drug addiction. Indigenous medicines like Ayahuasca and Ibogaine have been used to cure deep emotional wounds and help the participant make peace with psychological demons that may have kept them bound to pain and suffering. Psychedelics have also altered the consciousness of many great visionaries, innovators, artists and scientists around the world. Many of these post-psychedelic journeys have lead to breakthroughs in technology and science. The International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research & Service (ICEERS), Johns Hopkins University and many other reputable institutions around the world have begun to study the use of psychedelics and consciousness. These psychedelic experiences, if done in a logical scientific and moral way, could be the bridge we need to cross the abyss between bio and digital consciousness.

Humanity could use psychedelics in order to prepare for the altered states of consciousness such as A.I., AR and virtual consciousness in the near future. One only needs to drink a half cup of Ayahuasca to understand what the post singularity world might be like. It is a journey into a geometric psychedelic transhuman state of hyper consciousness. Time and human sensorial perception are replaced with new information that contradicts the known human experience.

The psychedelic experience may give us a glimpse into what it may feel like to upload our consciousness into a digital reality.”

Michael Anissimov is a futurist thinker focused on emerging technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and Artificial Intelligence. He previously managed Singularity Summit and worked as media director for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, as well as co-founding the Extreme Futurist Festival. The Singularity Summit has received coverage from Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, the San Francisco Chronicle, award-winning science writer Carl Zimmer, The Verge, and a front page article in TIME magazine. Mr. Anissimov emphasizes the need for research into artificial intelligence goal systems to develop “Friendly Artificial Intelligence” for human civilization to successfully navigate the intelligence explosion. He appears in print, on podcasts, in documentaries, public speaking at conferences, and other media to spread this message. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Dr. Egil Asprem is a scholar of religion and intellectual history, and a specialist of Western esotericism. He has published and lectured on the interface between transhumanism and religion, and runs the blog Heterodoxology.com. Asprem is currently based at University of California Santa Barbara, where his research explores the cognitive science of esoteric beliefs and practices. He is the author of the book Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture (SUNY Press, 2012), and co-editor of Contemporary Esotericism (Equinox, 2013)”

Brad Carmack graduated from the JD/MPA program at Brigham Young University in April 2011, and became a licensed California attorney that same year. During school he majored in biology, clerked for Justice Joel Horton of the Idaho Supreme Court, and worked as a teacher’s assistant for human resources law, biodiversity, management ethics, and bioethics. Brad initiated and hosted BYU Ethics Professor luncheons to bring together the various ethics endeavors taking place at BYU. He also led BYU Jail Outreach for two years as President, helping to tutor inmates in English, math, and science. Brad coauthored a business ethics case, Caprica Energy and Its Choices, published by the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. A religious activist and member of the LDS Church, Brad loves to write about transhumanism, bioethics, and religion. Brad is author of Breaking the Patriarchal Grip: an argument for governance equality through sacred disobedience and Homosexuality: A Straight BYU Student’s Perspective, available at bradcarmack.blogspot.com.

Brad is a Director of the Mormon Transhumanist Association. He presented the postgenderist “Mormonism Beyond the Gender Binary” at the 2012 Mormon Transhumanist Association Conference, and “LDS Transsexual Policy: A Critique” in 2013. Last, he presented “Transfigurism” at the 87th Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Society (San Francisco, March 2013) during the Karl Jaspers Society of North America meeting.

Andrés Gomez Emilsson is the co-founder and current president of the Stanford Transhumanist Association. He has an undergraduate degree on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science from Stanford, and he is currently pursuing a Masters in Computational Psychology, also at Stanford. He has worked at AI companies such as Kanjoya and and Klout, and his current research topic is emotional classification with computational techniques and pragmatics. He intends to establish the field of consciousness engineering someday in the near future. He has represented Mexico in international math and science Olympiads, and accidentally won the first place in the Norwegian Mathematics Olympiad. His speaking topic is: “Consciousness engineering”

Abelard Lindsay has been doing software development professionally for 20 years. He is currently in his late 30s and in his second year of earning a masters in computer science. Abelard started investigating alternative medicine and the brain about 10 years ago. He invented the CILTEP stack in late 2011 and has been testing and developing it in an open source manner in coordination with the longecity.org community ever since. He writes frequently about cognitive enhancement related topics and regularly contributes to the naturalstacks.com blog.

Andre Watson has a degree in biomedical engineering with concentrations in neuroscience, nanotechnology and biomaterials. He is a researcher who created what seems to be the first organelle-localized and ligand-targeted nanoparticles, and they can perform genomic modifications. His greatest foci are branching (neuro)pharmacology with nanotechnology and his understanding of neurophysiology. He is presently working on a personalized nanomedicine startup.

Wendy Stolyarov is an illustrator, designer, and voice actress. While Death is Wrong is her first children’s title, she has published several other works in conjunction with the Center for Transhumanity. Her art can be viewed at http://wendystolyarov.artworkfolio.com. —-

(at TRANSHUMAN VISIONS 2.0 - East Bay, the author Gennady Stolyarov II and illustrator Wendy Stolyarov will discuss the vision behindDeath is Wrong, the first illustrated children’s book on indefinite life extension, availablein bothpaperbackandKindleformats.Death is Wrong fills an important void by giving children anantidote to the common excuses and rationalizations for death. Young readers will recognize that their initial outrage at finding out about the existence of death is justified, and that senescence and death should be combated through scientific and technological means. Mr. and Mrs. Stolyarov will highlight the ideas, arguments, discoveries, and illustrations thatDeath is Wrong makes available to children in a friendly, accessible way.

Kevin Russell also goes by the moniker “The Techno-Optimist.” He is a transhumanist, philosopher, futurist, researcher, lecturer, founder of Simulet.com, and the Executive Director of Serious Wonder Media. Simulet’s mission is to empower one’s subjective experience of reality by using the latest discoveries to fuel conversation and deepen perspectives. Serious Wonder is a progressive futurist technology and consciousness website obsessed with the future. Their mission is to provide readers with the best information in futuristic ideas, technology, robotics, science, consciousness, philosophy, psychology, space travel, and modern design. Kevin enjoys educating and debating positively about technology, using pragmatic optimism to push perspectives about a probabilistic future.